NEWS + ANALYSIS

On July 17 the Australian Senate passed the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal), Bill 2013, making Australia the first country ever to repeal a major climate-change initiative.
Five years ago, retreat from such a regulatory regime would have hardly seemed imaginable, let alone possible. There was consensus across the entire political class, with both major parties supporting an emissions-trading scheme (ETS), with the press corps proclaiming that any party departing from the consensus would "face humiliation" and "sign its own death warrant. Millions of dollars were spent in public campaigns promoting the legislation, and polling showed a clear majority of Australians supporting “action.”
And then the unthinkable happened.